


Doctors and Squires

by George_Sand_II



Category: Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
Genre: Gay Romance, His level of canon sass is unparalleled and I am trying my best at living up to it, I suck at tags, Kissing, Livesey is an exasperated surgeon, Livesey is sassy as usual, M/M, Modern AU, Rated T for possible surgery scene later on, Romance, There may be some heavy petting later on, TreVesey 2: electric boogaloo, Trelawney is a rich board member with a fascination for a particular grumpy doctor, but no smut, hospital au, more characters may come
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:26:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25126192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/George_Sand_II/pseuds/George_Sand_II
Summary: Doctor David Livesey has done quiet and extraordinary work at the Black Hill Cove village hospital for decades, only to find that suddenly his complaints are heard and a benefactor makes his appearance. John Trelawney, however, turns out to be interesting for a lot more reasons than his money, and soon enough a game of reluctant romance is on.The Treasure Island TreVesey Modern Hospital AU that nobody asked for. Title taken from Ben Gunn's line 'Doctors and Squires says you!'. Yes, Ben. Doctors and Squires.
Relationships: Dr. Livesey/Squire John Trelawney
Kudos: 6





	1. The Qualities of Importunacy

The smell of food pervaded the air. This was not usually an issue, except that the smell of food was pervading the air in a hospital, in an area where, in Livesey’s view, food should not be enjoyed. He understood well enough the need to celebrate the finished construction of the new wing, to a certain point he even understood the need from the board to inaugurate their new member, the one with a wallet big enough to pay for this, but they had chosen to do it in the space that would soon become the new operating theatre. It was already partially furnished, for god’s sake! For all intents and purposes, it was ready for use, and if an emergency patient came in then what was he supposed to do? Cut them open amidst canapes and slices of fruit on sticks?

“Doctor Livesey!”

Livesey drew a deep breath, and turned with as little frustration showing as possible. The result was indifference, as the newest member of the hospital board came bumbling towards him. He bumbled quite a lot, Livesey had noticed. It would be endearing, had it been anywhere that wasn’t Livesey’s workplace, “Squire Trelawney.” Now would be an excellent time for his pacer to go off. Right now. Right this instant. Oh, please.

“Now, now, you are supposed to be a happy camper, I gather you’ve quite a few very expensive pieces of equipment to inaugurate yourself!” Trelawney was so obviously pleased that it was almost painful to watch. Painful because it made Livesey feel somewhat foolish for keeping up his annoyance, even as the squire smiled broadly before him, “Certainly I noticed the bill when it came! All good, though, Doctor, all good! You demand quality on behalf of your patients, that I can appreciate!”

Did this man ever speak without exclaiming? Livesey didn’t think he’d ever heard him do so. His pacer still refused to go off. Never before had Livesey so ardently hoped for some freak accident to happen, just bad enough to require him of course, not so bad as to actually kill someone, “Medical equipment is a very stupid place to attempt saving money, sir.” He replied dryly.

Trelawney looked at him for an uncharacteristically long span of silence, head pensively tilted just a bit. He looked very out of place in this sterile environment, even though someone had tried to spruce it up with some garlands of brightly coloured balloons. Almost… too kind.

“I imagine it is quite difficult for you, this,” he said at length, “Trust me when I say that had I known they would place the reception so centrally in your domain, I would have firmly protested.”

Livesey found himself utterly struck dumb. He had spent the whole time nursing a careful view of Trelawney as a privileged oaf, only for the man to quite firmly puncture this image in a single, caring sentence.

“Well,” he said eloquently, never usually one to be caught without a comeback, “Well, I-“

Just then, his pacer went off. Had he been any less of a stickler for propriety, Livesey would have cussed. Even being a stickler for propriety, he almost did. Instinct had him shoving his untouched glass of alcohol-free wine at Trelawney, before he was out the door in that distinctive sprint only ever achieved by emergency surgeons when every second might make the difference between life and death.

It was not, as it turned out, quite so grave. Rather it was a new and overtly nervous nurse who had seen an abnormal EKG and promptly reacted, which Livesey otherwise would not have minded much. However, the button they had pressed was the wrong one for the situation, so they were firmly reminded of the exact premises under which a surgeon should be paced. Livesey still did the routine job of adjusting the patient’s medication, and he took his sweet time with it, reluctant to rejoin the reception now that he had, after all, managed to get out of it. Even if Trelawney had become quite suddenly a strangely interesting factor. After a while, though, he really could not excuse himself any longer, and begrudgingly began to trudge back towards the new wing. Maybe they’d have gone early. Maybe some of the speeches had been cancelled. Maybe, maybe, a man was allowed to hope.

Livesey stopped. In the hallway just around the next bend, where no one was supposed to be yet as the wing was technically not open before tomorrow, there were footsteps. They sounded…  
Bumbling.

“Squire Trelawney,” said Livesey out loud, “No need to hide yourself, you are quite discovered.”

The steps, which had been attempting to retreat quietly, stopped, and soon the squire peeked out from behind the corner. He looked, once more, woefully out of place, “Oh, hullo again Livesey, emergency sorted then, eh?”

“Indeed,” answered Livesey.

“I was just trying to catch a bit of a break, you see,” the squire began, “They’re very determined at using my money like gravel to fill all the gaps in the road.” He smiled again, quite winningly, evidently used to people who were that easy to win over.

“Oh, woe,” Livesey’s voice dripped with enough sarcasm to fill an Olympic pool, “How unfortunate to have a wallet so big you could go boating in it.”

Trelawney looked for a moment like he’d been slapped. Then he burst into a laughter so booming and pleasant, that Livesey unwittingly smiled along with it, “Quite, quite! Yes, I imagine I could if I wanted to, although even out on the middle of the sea I shouldn’t be rid of all the people who would wish to rid me of it.” He looked at the doctor now with both respect and amusement, “Do you know, I decided to pay for the new wing mostly because of that feature article you had in the papers a few months back.”

“You did?” Livesey asked, heart sinking a little. He had written that article after a 12-hour shift, and it was very angry and barely coherent. He’d regretted it immediately upon waking the next morning, but found that he had by then already made the mistake of sending it in, “It was not my finest hour.” He hesitantly admitted.

Leaning forward slightly, the squire pierced him with a gaze that positively gleamed with complicity, “No, but it was honest. And I admire more than anything an honest man.”

“Oh,” said Livesey, with the vague feeling that he was in the process of being steamrolled, and the sudden realisation that he was actually enjoying it. Strange. He swallowed, finding his throat suddenly quite dry, and his brain empty of clever things to say. Before him, Trelawney basked in it, and there was something about the way his eyes briefly scanned Livesey’s form that left the doctor wanting to straighten his tie and smooth back his hair.

“Well, to get right to it, doctor,” the squire winked, leaving Livesey quite shocked, and also with a faint blush upon his cheeks that made Trelawney even keener by the looks of him, “How would you feel about dinner?”

“Dinner.” Livesey repeated dumbly. He was being asked out. By a man he had spoken to for a grand combined total of maybe five minutes. And he was actually contemplating saying yes.

“Dinner,” nodded the squire, “At my estate.”

Livesey’s eyes narrowed slightly. What sort of a proposition was this, exactly? Come to dinner, oh and it just so happens to be in the same building as fifty available bedrooms. Or however many the man was in possession of. 

“No,” he finally said, shocking himself very thoroughly by having actually, for a moment, seriously considered the proposition, “Flattered though I may be at your importunacy, my answer is no, thank you.”

“Pity,” said the squire, looking strangely not put out, “I suppose I shall simply have to work a bit harder at it.”

He left Livesey quite speechless, and by the time the words ‘What do you mean work?’ made themselves known in his mind as the first coherent sentence in minutes, he was already gone.


	2. Persistence is Key

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Livesey gets a gift from a secret admirer, who manages to remain secret for all of .2 seconds.

Foamy water ran through his fingers, hammering against the sterile steel sink, and swirled in a steady maelstrom down the drain. There was something about the repetitive thoroughness of this activity that had always calmed Livesey, something about the fact that this was a factor that he could control. Many things happened in an operating theatre, and some of them were random and unpredictable, turning routine surgeries into blood-filled messes. An ulcer that the patient had borne for so long that it burst the moment he got his hands on it, for example. Nothing worse than a patient bleeding like a sieve. Stoicism, he mused, was one of the most overrated qualities a human being could have. Especially when they applied it in the matter of their physical well-being.

He was in the process of intentionally taking much too long at the simple task of washing his hands, when a nurse came sheepishly into the room. Livesey knew this nurse, and she had taken to the unfortunate habit of barking up entirely the wrong tree. When he looked at her and hummed in a questioning tone, her cheeks grew pink, and he could almost see her pulse rise slightly. Had he been closer, he would likely have observed her pupils grow wider. Indeed, she had chosen the worst tree in the whole forest.

“There’s something for you at your –“

“Does this have anything to do with a patient?” Livesey interrupted rather tersely.

“No, however I still think –“

“If it has nothing to do with a patient, a colleague, or a time-sensitive matter…” began Livesey, turning his attention back to warm water and soap, “Then it can wait.”

Now rather dejected, the nurse simply muttered a “Yes, doctor.” and left. Livesey shook his head and continued at his errand.

It took him three minutes and forty-seven seconds, he didn’t count, but there was a great big ticking clock over on the wall reminding him of exactly how long he was taking. Once he felt he couldn’t possibly afford to rack up a higher water bill, he shut off the tap and exited the room, heading towards his office with the vague hope that somebody would have been kind enough to find him some form of caffeine to get him through the next four hours of his shift.

There was coffee on his desk. That was not what made him take pause just inside the threshold of his office. No, what made him take pause were the flowers. Looking extravagantly expensive and far too high-brow for his messy little office, and the paper-strewn desk, they gleamed at him almost deviously from their decisively undecorative vase, which was a small stainless-steel bedpan. Livesey blinked, and backed out of his office, catching the eye of his secretary and sending her a wordless question. True to form, she grinned at him. Nothing interesting usually happened around Livesey’s person, save emergency operations, so the irony of having been blessed with one of the most morbidly gossip-loving secretaries in the entire institution was not lost on him.

Without ever getting out of her chair, she rolled over to him and held out her hand. There was a small envelope in it, “They came with this,” she said, and motioned for him to take it, “Very interesting, I must say.”

“You’ve read it then, I take it, Mrs Hawkins,” he stated rather disapprovingly, and snatched the envelope from her. It was one of those small, fancy ones that could only hold a simple folding card of the sort that florists would normally use. This one had a logo on it in gold lettering, which Livesey didn’t need in order to discern that it came from a shop he would never even enter out of miserly principle.

Having, now, had his curiosity distinctly awakened, and a sense of serious suspicion begin to rise, he sidled back into his office, closed the door very thoroughly behind himself, and slid out the card.

It read, creatively ‘Doctor Livesey’, and, when he opened it, ‘Your Secret Admirer’.

“Hah,” Livesey chuckled sardonically, “Secret, eh? Not if I have a say in this.” Fairly certain that he knew where to find what he was looking for, he went to one of his shelves and sifted through some papers. It was a bit low in the pile, but it was there; the agenda from their last board meeting - importantly, it had Trelawney’s handwritten notes on it. A mere moment of comparison later, and Livesey had his answer. He also had a phone with Trelawney, and all the other board members’, numbers on it. Livesey typed fast. Most surgeons do.

**David Livesey:**  
_Stop sending me flowers._

Almost immediately, he felt his phone vibrate in his hand, and found that he needed a moment to sigh very deeply, and roll his eyes very far.

**John Trelawney:**  
_I would never._

**David Livesey:**  
_Stop pretending. I know your handwriting._

**John Trelawney:**  
_Oh, I am flattered._

**David Livesey:**  
_Don’t be. And I’m serious, This needs to stop._

**John Trelawney:**  
_Why? Did you not like them?_

Having to do a double take, Livesey stared at the screen with disbelief. He had expected the squire to simply… well, now that he thought about it, he wasn’t certain what he had expected. Not this. Although, perhaps, it might be said that he could have foreseen it, had he taken a moment to actually think before he texted. His phone vibrated again. He had taken too long to answer.

**John Trelawney:**  
_I take that as a yes. I’ll send a proper vase with the next ones, shall I?_

Livesey spun around, and stared out of the office. It was in the new wing, which meant that the wall facing out towards his secretary’s desk and the hallway was made out of three panels of glass and a door. All he caught was a wink and a smile, then Trelawney disappeared just as smoothly as he had apparated.

“You persistent bastard,” mumbled Livesey, not entirely unappreciatively.


End file.
